Real Purchase Research Articles

Digital Whisperers: Decoding the E-WOM and Credibility Cocktail Driving Purchase Intentions

This research explored the conduct of online purchases in the digital sector through an integrative process, using collections of variables seldom seen in previous studies. The study cantered on the effect of eWOM, message source credibility, perceived risk, and group influence on real purchasing intention to further assess the concept with the most impact. The survey consisted of consumers of Daraz.pk, who recently made online transactions. The examination used a self-regulated survey to collect feedback from respondents. SEM-Smart PLS was used as the evaluation method for the study. It has been observed that eWOM has the most significant effect on purchase intention, followed by message source credibility. Perceived risk often ideally mediates the relation between eWOM and message source credibility against online purchase intention. Social implications of the study include consumers' increasing reliance on online reviews and the shaping of consumer behavior via online reviews.

Environmental Awareness Toward Issues and Challenges of Sustainable Consumerism in the Indian Apparel Industry

This confirmatory study focused on studying the attitude and behavior as well as environmental awareness towards sustainable consumerism. The study also aimed to check if accountability on the part of brands and the government could enhance sustainability in the apparel industry. An empirical inquiry was conducted with 396 respondents, considering they are consumers with purchasing power. The collected data were analyzed using correlation and descriptive analysis. Based on the findings, consumers’ apparel use and brand accountability are positively associated. At the same time, it was found that the attitude and behavior of consumers are the least essential determinants for sustainable apparel consumption. This might imply that their optimistic outlook may not always translate into real purchase behavior, which is consistent with earlier studies. The results of this research provide a foundation for a better comprehension of the many factors, including the sustainability of a clothing brand or product, which may affect consumer behavior. This approach could help the fashion industry develop practical strategies and alter how people think about and utilize apparel in the future.

Individual preferences for food items within couples: Validating choice experiments predictions with real purchases data

AbstractDespite the popularity of choice experiments (CEs) for the valuation of environmental goods and services, some of its shortcomings have been only partially addressed by the literature. Among these, of particular saliency are the hypothetical nature of CEs and the lack of information on joint choices (e.g. choices made by couples) in traditional CEs. In this study, we contribute to filling these gaps by investigating joint choices concerning cheeses produced via different processes, involving environmental and social sustainability features. We use a two‐stage preference elicitation approach, using first stated and then real consumption choices collected from a sample of 90 couples. In the first stage, each member of the couples separately took part in a web survey with a hypothetical CE. In the second, these couples jointly engaged in a field experiment with monetary incentives in which they jointly chose the cheeses to purchase. This approach allows us to evaluate the role of individual preferences in shaping joint choices and to investigate whether predictions from stated choice data are congruent with, and validated by, real purchase data. We use CE data to estimate individual preferences with discrete choice models and use joint purchase data via the Multiple Discrete‐Continuous Nested Extreme Value model. Results suggest that joint real choices follow a substantively different decision process from that of individual stated choices.

How Content Attributes of Short Video Influence Online Purchase Intention: The Mediating Role of Perceived Value

In today’s digital landscape, short videos have become a dominant form of visual communication, captivating millions on social media and platforms like “TikTok.” As the short video sector flourishes, increasing businesses are turning to these platforms for marketing purposes. Despite this trend, there’s a noticeable gap in comprehensive understanding and research on the elements that drive consumer purchases through short video platforms. A survey exploring the impact of short video content attributes on consumer buying intentions was conducted to address this problem. The survey received input from 342 Chinese users of short video platforms. SEM was run to analyse data. The results of this study have shown that consumers tend to have both a better understanding and a more favourable impression of the product after watching clear and informative short videos. Additionally, the impact of clarity, practicality, and promotional prices on purchasing intentions is indirectly affected by the lens of the perceived value. The research offers insights into short video marketing and purchasing behaviour by providing valuable information regarding the Chinese market, but results may not apply elsewhere due to cultural and market differences. It is essential to explore in the next stage if the obtained outcomes are applicable to different cultures. Moreover, the study is based on self-reported data that can be influenced by social desirability bias and memory bias. Further studies might equip themselves with behavioral data, such as real purchase records, to complement the information from subjects to make up for the constraints of such self-reporting.

Nudging consumers’ choices for niche milk: A real purchase experiment

Changing behaviours causing poor health is an ongoing global health challenge that requires developing adequate food policies and strengthening their effectiveness. Policies based on nudging have become increasingly popular internationally, but the literature provides mixed evidence of their effectiveness, with an intense academic debate. This study contributes to the debate by investigating the effect of different nudging techniques (availability enhancement, visibility enhancement and healthy eating calls) via a framed field experiment involving purchases of milk types. Participants were split into different nudging treatment groups and were endowed with a cash amount to purchase any desired quantity of the different products. We modelled observed choices via the multiple discrete–continuous nested extreme value model, which has yet to receive attention for the analysis of nudging effects on food choices. Results show that only the healthy eating call nudge effectively drove participants towards healthier milk choices, while the effect of other nudges is statistically insignificant. We provide simulated demand curves conditional on nudging treatments, which measure the effect of the latter on consumers’ consumption levels of the different milk types available.

Consumer purchase intention for extrinsic and intrinsic cues of construction and demolition waste recycled products

PurposeThe preferences and adoption of recycled materials by consumers are subject to a variety of factors, such as enablers and barriers. Despite this, there exists a paucity of research concerning stakeholders' perceived value and real purchase decision towards recycled products. Consequently, this research study aims to fill this gap by investigating stakeholders' perceived value of recycled products derived from construction and demolition (C&D) waste and its effect on purchase decisions.Design/methodology/approachResearch data were collected from 219 valid questionnaires completed by Chinese stakeholders. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was then employed to test eight hypotheses.FindingsThe results show intrinsic cue (materials) and extrinsic cue (brand) influence the stakeholders’ judgment on C&D waste recycled products’ value and then their purchase intention. However, cues such as quality, word-of-mouth, price, policy and advertised have not play a significant role in practice.Originality/valueThis research study verified the significance of brand and material cues on decision making for purchasing C&D waste recycled products, providing new insights to policy making to enhance the uptake of C&D waste recycled products in construction industry.

The paradoxical effect of advertising and health consciousness on purchasing behaviour: Analysing frozen convenience foods attributes

AbstractGiven the increasing academic and applied interest in convenience foods, this research aims to examine the personal and extrinsic factors concerning the consumption of frozen convenience foods (FCF). The study relies on theories to reveal the connection between the attributes of FCF and the real purchase behaviour of Egyptian customers. A total of 608 Egyptian customers participated in the methodological survey investigation. This study employed partial least square‐multi‐group analysis to compare different groups of respondents according to purchasing frequency. The study findings revealed the identification of important pathways of consumer behaviour towards frozen foods related first to its different attributes and second to the contradictory effect of both health awareness and the influence of advertising. The study presented its theoretical and practical contributions in this regard. Using the model, researchers drew four potential scenarios validating the theory and impacting business.

Price Optimization Combining Conjoint Data and Purchase History: A Causal Modeling Approach

Abstract: Pricing decisions of companies require an understanding of the causal effect of a price change on the demand. When real-life pricing experiments are infeasible, data-driven decision-making must be based on alternative data sources such as purchase history (sales data) and conjoint studies where a group of customers is asked to make imaginary purchases in an artificial setup. We present an approach for price optimization that combines population statistics, purchase history, and conjoint data in a systematic way. We build on the recent advances in causal inference to identify and quantify the effect of price on the purchase probability at the customer level. The identification task is a transportability problem whose solution requires a parametric assumption on the differences between the conjoint study and real purchases. The causal effect is estimated using Bayesian methods that take into account the uncertainty of the data sources. The pricing decision is made by comparing the estimated posterior distributions of gross profit for different prices. The approach is demonstrated with simulated data resembling the features of real-world data.

Green Purchase Behaviour Gap: The Effect of Past Behaviour on Green Food Product Purchase Intentions among Individual Consumers.

The purpose of this study is to examine factors affecting green food product purchase intentions and, specifically, to specify the role of past behaviour in shaping purchase intentions for these products and in switching to environmentally friendly food purchases. As for the theoretical framework, the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) was used, with certain modifications proposed; namely, additional constructs were included: past behaviour, knowledge, and trust in green food. Data were collected from 650 green product consumers in Poland. The online survey method was employed. The research revealed that past behaviour is a powerful indicator, which, to the greatest extent, explains purchase behaviours towards green food. This paper explores the fact that attitudes are also strongly linked to green food purchase intentions. Moreover, social norms, trust, and knowledge also have a positive effect on the intention to purchase green food products. Perceived behavioural control is relatively weak but statistically significant. The extended model explains 57% of the variance in green food purchase intentions. By incorporating past behaviour into the TPB, this study gives a new insight into understanding the inconsistency between positive attitudes towards green food and real purchase behaviours. The results of the study provide managers working in the food sector with relevant guidelines for the design of marketing strategies.

The impact of voluntary sustainability adjustments on greenhouse gas emissions from food consumption – The case of Denmark

In this study we ask how a range of environmental sustainability adjustments that consumers find it easy to adopt affect the carbon footprint of their food consumption. The study is based on information about real purchases of food products and responses to a questionnaire about the various sustainability adjustments that the study participants apply and their concern about climate change. Based on principal component and regression analysis the results from the study indicate that sustainability adjustments such as organic consumption, buying domestically produced food and eating seasonal produce, as well as concern about climate change, are associated with a reduced carbon footprint from food consumption. The largest reductions were found for organic consumers. The results suggested that most committed organic consumers have a carbon footprint that is about one third smaller than that of consumers who seldom buy organic food products. The results also indicate that these voluntary sustainability adjustments are not sufficient to secure conformity with today’s goals for reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

Credit Card Fraud Identification using Logistic Regression and Random Forest

Fraud is an ancient yet ever-changing profession. Because of the digitization of money, financial transactions, banks, fraudsters now have a limitless number of possibilities to perpetrate crime from behind a screen, anywhere around the world. Fraud has a broad influence, with direct ramifications for business and the economy. It is of great worry to cybercrime organizations as recent studies have proven that ML algorithms may successfully be utilized to identify fraudulent transactions in massive amounts of payment data. Such techniques may identify fraudulent transactions in real time, which human auditors may miss. In this research, we apply supervised ML algorithms to the issue of fraud identification by analyzing simulated financial transaction data that is available to the public. Our aim is to show how supervised ML methods may be utilized to successfully identify data with extreme class disproportion. By way of example, we show how exploratory analysis may be utilized to identify fraudulent from real purchases. We also show that Random Forest outperform Logistic Regression when applied to a clearly distinguished dataset.

Effects of nutritional profile system and front labeling in food selection during purchases: a systematic review

Introduction. Nutritional profiling systems (NPS) are mainly used in front-end labeling policies in order to make the purchase and consumption choice conscious and healthy. Objetive. This study systematically reviewed evidence from interventions on the effect of NPS in the front-of- package on food purchases. Materials and methods. A bibliographic search was carried out in electronic sources from Medline, Elsevier, Scielo and Lilacs, of experimental studies and intervention between 2012 and 2022. A total of 14 articles were included in the review. They were analyzed according to the intervention modality used: 4 studies analyzed the effect of NPS in a real purchase situation and 10 evaluated purchase perception/intention. Results. According to the modality of intervention, the 6 studies that analyzed the NPS-warning system, all recorded healthier purchases compared to the control groups. While for the NPS-NutriScore, Health Star Rating and Multiple Traffic Lights were effective in the decision to purchase healthier foods, in 5 of 7 studies for the first NPS, in 4 of 7 for the second and in 4 of 8 for the third, compared with control groups. Conclusions. Findings of this study suggest that NPSs may be effective for healthy purchase choices, even so it is necessary to strengthen the system and policies with nutritional food education campaigns.

The Impact of Live Commerce and Short Video on College Students Actual Purchase

The emergence of new media has led to live commerce becoming a novel, widely adopted trend, and live commerce has also become a new business model. This study has put a lot of work into creating an integrated model that combines the theories of planned behavior and media exposure to explain the connection between watching short videos and in-person shopping. We looked at the connections between attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, frequency, duration, and attention to live commerce viewing, as well as real purchases. To check the accuracy of the fictitious model, 402 college students in China participated in a questionnaire study that yielded empirical data. The structural equation model is shown to have a strong model fit for empirical data, while the measurement model demonstrates that the theoretical constructs have appropriate reliability and validity. The results of the study demonstrate that customers attitudes toward live commerce and their perceived behavioral control over it greatly influenced their actual purchases. But the effect of subjective norms on actual purchases has not been verified. This research addressed the knowledge gap in the application of TPB to explain offline and online purchasing behavior. Also, this study has its limitation; since the research is primarily focused on China, it is difficult to extrapolate the findings to other countries.

Prometheus in the Iraqi alley: Muḥammad Khuḍayyir’s twenty-first century adab

The Iraqi writer Muḥammad Khuḍayyir has in recent years published numerous fictional sketches and articles online. One of the factors that has led to this late flurry of production has been the perilous state of Iraqi culture, especially after 2003. Khuḍayyir has reacted to the threats to the Iraqi cultural memory by writing articles in which he pays imaginative homage to the writers of previous generations (like Mahdī ʿĪsā al-Ṣaqr). The imagery Khuḍayyir uses in his articles is a crucial part of the innovative way in which he tries to preserve a ‘memory of literature’. However, in his fictional sketches, Khuḍayyir evokes a poetics of fire which expresses his scepticism as to whether a recovery of the literature of the past can have real purchase in the current Iraqi cultural landscape. Khuḍayyir’s use of the internet to disseminate his cultural narratives confirms the ambivalent cultural space he chooses to inhabit.

Consumers' willingness to pay for organic rice: Insights from a non‐hypothetical experiment in Indonesia

AbstractAs in many high‐income countries, there is increasing awareness towards organic farming in many low‐ and middle‐income countries. Sustained local demand is an essential requirement for further adoption of organic farming by smallholders, who typically have only limited access to export markets. Until now, only few studies have explored the local willingness to pay (WTP) for organic products in low‐ and middle‐income countries in real purchase situations. This paper analyses the consumers' WTP for organic rice in urban and suburban Indonesia using an incentive‐compatible auction based on the Becker–DeGroot–Marschak (BDM) approach. We further study the effect of income and a randomised information treatment about the benefits of organic food on respondents' WTP. Estimates suggest that respondents are willing to pay an average price premium of 20% compared with what they paid for conventional rice outside our experiment. However, our results also indicate that raising consumers' WTP further is complex. Showing participants a video about health or, alternatively, environmental benefits of organic food was not effective in further raising WTP. The results can be used as a basis for the design of alternative awareness measures to increase knowledge, interest and demand for organic food.

Attitudes and Actual Buying Behaviour of Sustainable Clothes from the Perspective of Female Generations in Slovakia

Mainstream economics sees the solution to the problem of exploitative use of limited natural resources in a properly functioning price system. The price mechanism thus works on the principle of scarcity: if a natural resource becomes scarce, it is used less (higher demand causes an increase in the price of the resource). This argumentation is subject to the fulfilment of one condition: the price mechanism must work properly. The criticism of mainstream economics lies in the fact that the global market still offers producers locations with attractive input prices. This is how we achieve global economic growth but also an enormous increase in environmental problems. The clothing industry makes a significant global contribution to increasing the environmental burden. Enormous production is seconded here by customer demand. Specifically, fast fashion represents a constant cycle of buying and disposing of clothes, leading to a significant amount of textile waste. Consumers, with their decision-making power and choices,can be a part of a solution, but it is necessary to know their behaviour. The aim of the paper was to examine whether there exist differences among four female generational cohorts in Slovakia regarding their attitudes towards sustainable clothes and their real purchase behaviour. The questionnaire survey on the sample of n = 428 respondents was used as a method of data collection. One-way ANOVA was used to determine differences between all age groups. A Tukey post hoc test revealed that (1) Gen Y and Gen Z had significantly higher attitudes towards sustainable clothing in comparison with Baby Boomers and (2) Gen X and Gen Y expressed higher levels of purchases of sustainable clothes in comparison with both Baby Boomers and Gen Z. There were no significant differences in actual purchases of sustainable clothing between Gen X and Gen Y orbetween Baby Boomers and Gen Z. The oldest and youngest generations (Baby Boomers and Gen Z) do not differ among themselves but buy significantly less sustainable clothes in comparison with Gen X and Gen Y. Overall, all generations showed positive attitudes towards sustainable clothes, especially younger generations, but this was not fully reflected in their real purchase behaviour. Gen Z and Baby Boomers tend not to buy sustainable clothes, and Gen X and Gen Y are indifferent in this issue. This knowledge helps companies within the fashion industry concentrate on specific segments, tailor their communication strategies accordingly, target educational statements and adopt appropriate practices that are in line with consumer behaviour. To effectively tackle this matter, understanding diverse consumer groups can be highly advantageous, offering valuable insights into their behavioural patterns. It helps to distinguish practices that motivate female consumers to purchase sustainable clothes.

Research on the Evolution of Consumers’ Purchase Intention Based on Online Reviews and Opinion Dynamics

Due to the development of the e-commerce platform and the internet technology, the inclination of consumers for online shopping is shooting up. To lure consumers and gratify consumers, it’s necessary for enterprise to explore and excavate the purchase intention evolution mechanism so that enterprises can customize the marketing strategies and get consumers to purchase products. Previous studies have shown that consumers’ purchase intention is influenced significantly by online reviews. However, the mechanism by which consumers’ real purchase intentions change when they refer to online reviews is unclear. In fact, the process that consumers browse online reviews is truly an opinion interaction process between recipients (consumers who buy goods) and reviewers (consumers who post online reviews). Interaction between opinions may lead to changes in consumers’ purchase intentions. Therefore, an opinion dynamics model, the Deffuant–Weisbuch (D-W) model, is introduced and improved to explore the dynamic evolution of consumers’ purchase intention. Firstly, online reviews are executed. Then, fuzzy quantification of sentimental opinion values is performed through trapezoidal fuzzy numbers. Secondly, the improved D-W model is constructed considering the influence of the personality of recipients and the professionalism of reviewers on opinion interaction and the “negative bias” mechanism. Finally, a case study is constructed with online reviews of a cell phone by using the above method. In addition, sensitivity analyses are conducted for the personality coefficient of recipients, professionalism of reviewers, and size of heterogeneous consumers, respectively, through which, the validity of the proposed method is expounded. This study not only contributes to an in-depth discussion about the influencing factors of purchase intention, but also provides references for enterprises to better utilize online reviews to promote products and attract consumers.

Contextual reference price in choice experiments

AbstractA reference price depends on the context of purchase. For prices in preference elicitation experiments to be interpreted by respondents exactly as prices in real purchases, a condition must be met: Contextual reference prices in experiments and real purchases must equal. Using a choice experiment, we found that the willingness to pay estimates tend to be smaller when the respondents are reminded about their self‐reported reference price of the product. This shows that the equality of reference price between experiments and real purchases may not hold. Thus, willingness to pay estimated from a choice experiment may only be contextually specific to its setting. The theory of contextual reference price may offer a fresh perspective on hypothetical bias, and it may be useful in refining choice experiments.

Fast Variational Bayes Methods for Multinomial Probit Models

The multinomial probit model is often used to analyze choice behavior. However, estimation with existing Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods is computationally costly, which limits its applicability to large choice datasets. This article proposes a variational Bayes method that is accurate and fast, even when a large number of choice alternatives and observations are considered. Variational methods usually require an analytical expression for the unnormalized posterior density and an adequate choice of variational family. Both are challenging to specify in a multinomial probit, which has a posterior that requires identifying restrictions and is augmented with a large set of latent utilities. We employ a spherical transformation on the covariance matrix of the latent utilities to construct an unnormalized augmented posterior that identifies the parameters, and use the conditional posterior of the latent utilities as part of the variational family. The proposed method is faster than MCMC, and can be made scalable to both a large number of choice alternatives and a large number of observations. The accuracy and scalability of our method is illustrated in numerical experiments and real purchase data with one million observations.

Next basket recommendation based on graph attention network and transformer

To solve the problem that when using recurrent neural network will forget the previously learned basket information and cannot reflect the user’s real purchase intention. A next basket recommendation based on graph attention network (GAT) and transformer model is proposed. Construct the item-basket relationship graph and use GAT to learn the basket interactive characteristics, then model the user interest representation, and finally obtain the item probability distribution through deep neural network. The experimental results on two real world datasets show that the proposed model outperforms state-of-the-art existing basket recommendation models. Through ablation experiments and hyperparameter experiments, the effectiveness of each module and the influence of model parameters are proved.